Press Statement | New Heritage Party Statement On Land Issues In Zambia.
Lusaka – 3rd September, 2022.
As a party formed on upholding the heritage of Zambian citizens especially vulnerable ones, we are appalled at the government’s unchallenged penchant for harming our people by targeting Zambians who are unable to defend themselves. The Kasompe demolitions and the removal of mobile money booths are a case in point.
It is a fact that demolitions have been carried out by successive governments, however, Zambians need to know and understand why only poor people’s areas are targeted and yet there are many areas in the whole country, where people have built illegal structures and yet no one targets them. Are we aware that every structure, including the erecting of a perimeter wall around a property, is meant to have Council approval? Yet, these are not demolished.
In Lusaka, for example, around Kamwala Market, wealthy people have built shops and other illegal structures just a few meters away from the railway line.
The answer is simple, people in the areas targeted are poor and cannot afford lawyers nor do they possess ‘title deeds ’ that settlers introduced to legitimise the theft of Zambian land from the legimate owners thereby completely dispossessing them of their land and making automatic ‘ vagabonds’ of an entire people.
No person can truly be a citizen without owning land. Land is our common heritage as a people and as a nation. It is, therefore, a shame that successive Zambian governments have been guilty of perpetuating imperialist, capitalist and colonial policies that deny land to the majority of Zambians to this day and under this current Government.
What used be known as ‘crown land’ and ‘native land’ during colonial rule is now simply called ” state” and “traditional” land respectively without any substantive change in the ownership demographic.
At the center of all these problems is the Zambian Constitution we inherited from the settlers which is still rife with colonial and racist clauses to disenfranchise, dis-inherit and dispossess poor Zambian citizens.
As the New Heritage Party, we are proposing that the current Government attends to this very important issue by ensuring that land law and the legal framework that by and large protects the minority interests just like it did during the colonial era, be expunged from our constitution and all subsidiary land statutes.
This constitutional and general legal reform as it relates to land is urgent and necessary because in Zambia today, the white, colonial settler class has been replaced by the middle class Zambian “makuwa ba nembo ” especially the “tenderprenures” and so called educated Zambians and the ruling elite.
Our solution to this divisive and highly adversarial subject includes, but is not limited to the following:
▪️for the constitution to clearly define who a Zambian is; we feel that the failure to do this has been responsible for the government’s ability to mistreat poor Zambian citizens with impunity, as is the case in Kasompe. These poor Zambians are treated like second class citizens. If those people in Kasompe were considered true citizens by the government, they would not have had their hard earned property destroyed in that callous manner.
▪️the release by Government of land Commission reports and to have these made available to every citizen. This should be done by, among other measures, digitising land maps and making them accessible to the general public.
▪️the conducting of a genuine, nationwide land audit, and
▪️for Parliament to pass a law that will truly protect and ring-fence land, our common HERITAGE, exclusively for Zambian citizens and posterity. This law must prohibit non-Zambians from leasing virgin land in this country in line with good practice in all progressive countries around the world.
▪️Parliament to pass a law that will prohibit non Zambians and non Zambian entities from leasing land for more than 35 years.
We, as a nation, have been extremely careless with regard to our land for far too long and need to quickly begin to guard our heritage for our children and our children’s children. God is not making any more land. Let us guard and utilize what we have while we still can.
#LetZambiansWin
Issued By:
Chishala Kateka,
President – New Heritage Party.